The Lucky 15 is a type of full cover bet, which has singles included in it. It is a very popular wager because it only requires punters to pick out four selections and it is something that you will hear many horse racing punters trying to chase town. Included in the Lucky 15 will be 15 separate bets. Along with the four singles, included are 6 doubles, 4 trebles and a big four-fold accumulator. What makes the Lucky 15 such a popular form of betting is that you would only need just one of the four selections to win in order to get some kind of return (because of the included singles). A lot of bookmakers will even pay out at double odds if just one winner is landed in a Lucky 15, which is where the term “lucky” comes from.
But a Lucky 15 can just as easily be utilised in football betting as it can be on the horses. The natural, straight forward option here would be just to have a look at a weekend coupon for example and pick out four winnings selections (which offer some value of course). You don’t have to go too big, or stray too far from odds on favourites for a Lucky 15. Landing four correct selection at odds of 1/2 on each would return over £25 worth of profit for you if they all came up, which is largely down to the accumulator odds included in the bet.
Of course, remember that you are placing 15 separate bets in a Lucky 15 and you have to pay for all of them. Asking for £1 stake on a Lucky 15 will mean that you have to stump up a total of a £15 stake.
Here we are going to look at the Half Time/Full Time 1/X option to build a Lucky 15 with. The Half Time/Full Time market of course, is a lot richer for punters than just backing an outright selection. If Chelsea were at home to say a relegation threatened Norwich, the outright market could be around 1/5 on the Blues to bag the win, while in a Chelsea/Chelsea Half Time/Full Time bet, you could get the home side at around 4/6 to be winning at half time and at full time.
But the bigger value in Half Time/Full Time bets is seeing a team throw away a lead at half time to end up drawing (Half Time/Full Time 1/X). It is tougher to call of course, but that will be reflected in bigger odds.
So what kind of games would you be looking for in this scenario? You certainly wouldn’t look at a Chelsea/Draw option, because the game would be looking far too lopsided. Instead you are going to want to look at games where the teams are relatively evenly matched. This could generally focus on teams who don’t score a lot and don’t give much away at the back either. The chance of a draw is far more likely to happen than in a lop-sided scenario.
An example here is that a Chelsea/Draw Half Time/Full Time against Norwich being priced up at 22/1, while a Hull/Draw scenario against Aston Villa returns around 14/1. The latter, even though at the shorter odds, naturally makes the better value because there is a higher chance of a draw. Don’t chase the outrageous odds for a Lucky 15, track the sensible ones instead.
There is a general rule of thumb in soccer stats, and that is around 1/3 of the games for an entire season, will end in a draw. That is not a high return, because look at it the other way, two third of games don’t end in a draw, so in trying to back a draw you are immediately going against the odds. At the time of writing, the Premier League had only returned draws in 20% of all games (357 in total). So this season has been decidedly short of draws, with the 2012/13 season resulting in 28% of its matches being drawn.
The natural starting point would be to look for the teams who do draw more games than others. This season’s highest tallies have come from West Brom, Stoke and Southampton. There are two elements to the Half Time/Full Time bet of course and so you will want to be looking at teams who have a higher percentage of winning games at half time. Most of the time this will be the top clubs, but look outside of the likes of Liverpool and Man City and you will find gems like Southampton who have been winning a third of their games at half time. It is mid table teams like that which you want to look at.
The biggest stat though you want to consider, is the number of games an away team has been winning at half time. Why? Because you will get a lower percentage of away wins in a season than you will home wins. So if an away team gets an early advantage on the board at half time, it is plausible to expect the home side to come back into it. Think of it the other way around, if you look at strong side winning at half time on home turf, then the likelihood that they will let a lead slip and fall to a draw is far less.
So that is where you look to try and pick out the best teams for your Half Time/Full Time 1/X betting. Look for teams who have drawn a high percentage of games already in the season, those generally around the mid table area, and then look for them on the road in non-lopsided games. If someone like Southampton is on the road at Old Trafford, then there is less of a likelihood of them getting ahead in the first place than if they are playing at somewhere like Villa Park, against a team who are a way below them in the league.
The alternative route to this, would be too look at the stronger teams on the road against mid table position. This are also games which tend to offer a bigger chance of a draw happening. Another key stat to consider would be to look at sides who have a high percentage of their goals being equalising ones. It suggests a team with a good battling quality, where heads don’t drop after falling behind in a game. Looking at Southampton this season, 48% of their goals have been equalising ones. The reverse of that, marry it up with sides who have conceded the highest percentage of equalising goals. There are plenty of teams around this season like Stoke, Swansea, West Ham and West Brom, who have conceded over 40% of their goals as equalising ones.
Keys to Half Time/Full Time 1/X bets
Mid-table teams playing away at teams who are below them
Stronger teams playing against mid-table teams
Teams who have been winning a fair share of games at half time
Teams with over 40% of their goals for the season being equalising ones
